ging pardon and
declaring it all a mistake. There was one result of the game, however,
which was that when the Rockford people were organizing a professional
nine they wrote to Marshalltown and tried to secure the whole Anson
family, and Adrian, who was still only a boy, was allowed to sign with
them, I retaining his older brother at home to aid me in my business."

I am inclined to think that the old gentleman is mistaken in the
substitution of a "Bounding Rock" for a "Ryan Dead Ball" in that game,
although I do remember that the stitching was different from anything
that we had ever seen before, and it may be that we were fooled as he
has stated. If so the trick was certainly a clever one.

That same fall Sager and Haskins were engaged by the Rockford team, and
I have always thought that it was due to the representations made by
them that I was engaged to play with the Forest Citys the following
season. I signed with them for a salary of sixty-six dollars a month,
which was then considered a fairly good salary for a ball player, and
especially one who was only eighteen years old and a green country lad
at that.

All that winter Sager and I practiced as best we could in the loft of my
father's barn and I worked as hard as I knew how in order to become
proficient in the ball-playing art.

Before saying farewell to Marshalltown and its ball players let me
relate a most ludicrous incident that took place there some time before
my departure. A feeling of most intense rivalry in the base-ball line
existed between Des Moines and Clinton, Iowa, and one time when the
former had a match on with the latter I received an offer of fifty
dollars from the Clinton team to go on there and play with them in a
single game.

Now fifty dollars at that time was more money than I had ever had at any
one time in my life, and so without consulting any one I determined to
accept the offer. I knew that I would be compelled to disguise myself in
order to escape recognition either by members of the Des Moines team or
by some of the spectators, and this I proceeded to do by dying my hair,
staining my skin, etc.

I did not think that my own father could recognize me, when I completed
my preparations and started to the depot to take the train for Des
Moines, but that was where I made a mistake. The old gentleman ran
against me on the platform, penetrated my disguise at once and asked me
where I was going. I told him, and then he remarked that